"The 'peak oil' idea is dead because of the massive rise in shale oil and gas production"

Why? Because Saint Monbiot said so after reading a non-peer reviewed (and now widely criticised and debunked) report by Maugeri? If you claim to be the rational mathematician then you need to look more closely at this issue and understand that "reserves" are not the same as productin rates. (Peak oil is a peak RATE of oil production.) You also need to undertand the NET production of energy and that unconventional oil sources are slow to produce and have a low NET energy.

Oherwise it was an interesting article but would benefit from a description of how differentially dangerous different forms of radiation are. Seemingly paradoxically (not in reality of course) alpha radiation may have the shortest half-length in air (and so be the easiest to shield against) but it is the most carcinogenic because more energy is deposited in a single cell when it absorbs an alpha particle than is absorbed by a gamma ray "skipping" its way through tissue. Plutonium 238 and 239 emit alpha particles when they decay so absorbing plutonium contamination can be a very, very bad thing. We have not seen the end of the Fukushima tragedy - they have no idea how they are going to clean up those three reactors that melted down and that will probably one day release radioactive material through the bottom of their containment vessels.

Radiophobia aside few seem to be asking what will happen when gas becomes prohibitively expensive. Gas enables intermittent sources like wind and solar to meet demand. For example during a late afternoon heatwave while aircons are on max is when PV output wanes while wind farms are becalmed. Some will point out that last week in the US nukes had to be throttled back to due to cooling problems which simply means they need a bigger cooling system.

What Australia is doing now is increasing our gas dependence the same time we are exporting record amounts as LNG. Something will have to give. If we are serious about big (as opposed to trivial) emissions cuts we will have to objectively consider nuclear baseload. Alas some get the heebie jeebies just thinking about this so the cycle repeats; subsidised minor renewables underpinned by gas. I believe for example that Adelaide's 34c per kwh domestic electricity rate is among the world's highest. And on it goes.

“Ionising radiation: perhaps we have little to fear except fear itself”

Good point.

Nuclear energy is about the safest way to supply electricity. Yet we are scared stiff of it. How irrational is that?

Because we are so scared of it we place ever increasing regulations on it, so it is now too expensive for most countries to adopt.

And what is the consequence of that? The consequence is we continue to burn fossil fuels which cause about 10 to 100 times more fatalities per unit of electricity supplied.

That’s right: 10 to 100 times more fatalities from pollution from coal fired power plants than from nuclear generation for the same amount of electricity generated. And that is after nearly 60 years of nuclear power, 15,000 reactor-years of operation, and only one accident causing fatalities, with very few at that.

How rational is it to ban nuclear, or make it prohibitively expensive by excessive regulations, and by so doing cause us to continue to use a far less safe technology instead?

Regulatory ratcheting increased the cost of nuclear power by about a factor of four by 1990 compared with what it could have been. It has probably doubled again since 1990.

The anti-nuclear scaremongering - by groups like Greenpeace – over the past 50 odd years has scared the population and created radiation phobia. If not for this, nuclear would be far more advanced now, far cheaper and safer, and global CO2 emissions would be 10% to 20% lower that they are now. Importantly we’d be on a much faster path to reduce global emissions. Thank Greenpeace et al. for higher emissions and Carbon Tax.

I can predict with absolute certainty that anyone exposed to low-level ionising radiation will be dead within 150 years. Clearly, Something Must Be Done!

michael_in_adelaide

the peak oil concept was dead long before Monbiot said anything and the report he was referring to was just one of several on the issue that has killed it. Denounciations by green zealots does not count as debunking, incidentally. In any case, peak oil only ever referred to easy lift land reservoirs. Anyway, the evidence now is overwhelming that its dead. Time to adjust, as he has.

As for the main conclusions of the article, if you seriously believe the stuff on emissions, then nuclear is the only feasible option..

An interesting and measured article; to be compared with this from Fairfax:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/japan-nuclear-fallout-may-cause-1300-cancer-deaths-20120718-22akp.html#ixzz210yyhogG

What hysterical tripe and as good an example as you could get as to why the wretched Fairfax brand is only read by inner city elites and other sundry posers.

Bolt puts the thing into perspective:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_missing_facts_that_explode_the_new_fukushima_alarm/